Yi Mun-yol is, perhaps, one of Korea’s most under-rated writers, not because his writing is unknown, but because he has spent a large portion of his literary career out of step with the political winds of his time. And so it is in his short story, Pilon’s Pig. Pilon’s Pig is a short story that,…
The short story Stab (Stab Wound in literal translation) is something kind of different for Kim In-suk, at least in translation, as it is based in Korea – Kim is one of the few authors in Korea who routinely sites her stories overseas. It is also very short – only 53 pages of the book…
This time a 300 Second introduction to the excellent Asia Publishers series of 15 Bilingual Korean novels. The works include: “The Wounded” by Yi Cheong-jun, “Soul of Darkness” by Kim Won-il, “Sun-i Samch’on” by Hyun Ki-yong, “Mother’s Stake 1” by Pak Wansŏ, and “The Land of the Banished” by Jo Jung-rae.“Record of a Journey to Mujin” by Kim Seung-ok, “The Road…
Soul of Darkness (어둠의 혼), other than REALLY tempting me to make some kind of horrible pun that might end up as a blog name, is a brief, ugly, but completely transparent snapshot of what happens when starvation and politics intersect. In that way, it is also a snapshot of a particular time in Korean…
Our Friend’s Homecoming (돌아온 우리의 친구) by Shin Sang-ung (신 상 웅) is a short story/novella that was written some time in 1977-8 during a series called the Roadside Drinking Stall, which was turned into a collection in Korean. A roadside drinking stall is a place, often illegal, for quick drinking, a place to eliminate…
Here at KTLIT we are happy to welcome a new contributor aboard, Dongmi Hwang. Dongmi is, among other things, bilingual and bi-cultural, and as an introduction, we thought we do some side-by-side reviews, so that readers could get dual perspectives on the works we review here. Particularly interesting to me was the different ways we…
Shin Kyung-sook’s Where the Harmonium Was is an excellent short story that could be recommended to almost anyone. Published in 1993 it tells the story of a woman who is haunted by 10 days of her life when she was “six or seven”, the 10 days, after her mother deserted the family that another woman,…
Looking out at various things in the Korean translatosphere, it seems that good-hearted efforts are being undermined by poor planning, and the latest example of this can be found in the 15 volume collection of novellas just published by Asia Publishers. It sounds like a good project when you read the explanation: Asia Publishers present…